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Murdered Buzina was patriot of Ukraine but he loved Russia — TV anchor

This crime is a politically-motivated classical Bandera-style assassination, Russian TV anchorman Vladimir Solovyov told TASS

MOSCOW, April 16 /TASS/. The slain Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzina was a patriot of his country. He refused to leave Ukraine though fellow journalists warned him of the looming danger, Russian TV anchorman Vladimir Solovyov told TASS on Thursday.

"Oles was a patriot of Ukraine but he also loved Russia. He had his own voice, which was listened and heard by many people. This crime is a politically-motivated classical Bandera-style assassination," Solovyov said adding the task of investigators who were currently working at the scene was to conceal the traces of that crime.

Terrorist attacks with an aim to murder public figures and politicians who were unsuitable to Ukrainian nationalists and the Banderist underground used to be classified as assassinations in Ukraine in the middle of the 20th century.

Buzina had taken part in Solovyov’s talk shows on the Rossiya 1 TV channel more than once. "He was present at one of my talk shows not so long ago. I kept offering him to come to work in Moscow. I used to tell him that it was dangerous for him to stay /in Ukraine/ but he replied that his home was there," Solovyov concluded.

Well-known Ukrainian journalist and writer Oles Buzina was killed near his home in Kiev at midday on Thursday, ambulance doctors told TASS.

According to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko, he was shot at from a dark blue Ford Focus with foreign number plates.

Oles Buzina is a well-known Ukrainian journalist, writer and TV anchorman. He is the author of two books, including "Vampire Taras Shevchenko" and "The Union of Plough and Trident". Buzina used to be the editor-in-chief of the Segodnya newspaper who had to quit his post because of censorship in March this year.